1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a data processing system. In particular, the present invention relates to configuring and modeling server connections in a data processing system. Still more particular, the present invention relates to configuring and modeling server information in an enterprise tooling environment of the data processing system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Currently, application developers use enterprise application development tools, such as, for example, Rational® Application Developer, to develop enterprise applications. An enterprise tooling environment includes an integrated development environment (IDE), a graphical user interface, and a runtime environment that are provided within an enterprise application development tool for developing enterprise applications. Rational® Application Developer is a product available from International Business Machines Corporation. These development tools typically require a connection to be specified at development time in order to connect to backend servers. Backend servers include Enterprise Information Systems, such as, for example, relational database servers, SAP servers, PeopleSoft® servers and Siebel servers. SAP is a product available from SAP AG. PeopleSoft® is a product available from Oracle Corporation. Siebel is a product available from Siebel Systems, Inc.
In addition to a development time connection, these development tools automatically set up runtime connection management configurations, such as connection adapters, based on users' input. Most of the time, the same information that is collected for development time connections may be used to set up run time configurations. Users are not separated from the concerns of setting up runtime configurations when they are in the development phase and no distinctions are drawn between development time and runtime portion of the connection model.
In addition, development time connection information is not exactly in the same format as the run time connection information. For example, the user Id of the development time connection may be called “username”, but the user Id of the run time connection may be called “userId”.